Man on the Clapham omnibus

The phrase was reportedly first put to legal use in a judgment by Sir Richard Henn Collins MR in the English Court of Appeal libel case McQuire v. Western Morning News (1903). He attributed the phrase to Lord Bowen and used it in a negative sense: It may be derived from the phrase "Public opinion ... is the opinion of the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus", a description by the 19th-century journalist Walter Bagehot of a normal London man. Clapham, in South London, was at the time an undistinguished commuter suburb seen to represent "ordinary" London, and in the 19th century would have been served by horse-drawn omnibuses. Lord Justice Greer used the phrase in Hall v. Brooklands Auto-Racing Club (1933) to define the standard of care a defendant must live up to in order to avoid being found negligent. The use of the phrase was reviewed by the UK Supreme Court in Healthcare at Home Limited v. The Common Services Agency (2014), where Lord Reed said: ==Other related common law jurisdictions==

The expression has also been incorporated in Canadian patent jurisprudence, notably Beloit v. Valmet Oy in its discussion of the test for obviousness. In Australia, the "Clapham omnibus" expression has inspired the New South Wales and Victorian equivalents, "the man on the Bondi tram" (a now disused tram route in Sydney), "the man on the Bourke Street tram" (Melbourne), and "the ordinary person on the Belconnen omnibus" (Canberra). In Hong Kong, the equivalent expression is "the man on the Shau Kei Wan tram". ==See also==